Re: Ricin man: a wannabe animal rights terrorist?

On Tue, 4 Mar 2008 01:12:40 -0500, Bo Raxo wrote
(in article
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On Mar 3, 6:55 pm, "MaryL" <stanco...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
"tiny dancer" <tinydancer...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

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"Bo Raxo" <crimenewscen...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Charlie Wilkes" <charlie_wil...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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From the New York Times:

"He's just a little bit different," Mrs. Dansie said. "He was so
obsessed
with this cat; it was really strange. He didn't really act like he
wanted
to be a friend. I remember one time he put a cat trap out in our field,
and he caught our neighbor's cat. We told him he had to give it back."

Mr. Von Bergendorff, who is believed to be a computer graphic artist
whose work has appeared on several science fiction novels, appears to
have a lengthy history involving pets and animals. The police also found
three cats and an emaciated dog in his hotel room; the local shelter
took
custody of the animals, but the dog was so starved and parched it had to
be euthanized.

Public records show that Mr. Von Bergendorff lived for several years in
the 1980s and 1990s with a relative, Fred Bergendorff, in La Mesa,
Calif.
Mr. Bergendorff, who died on Jan. 27, was the founder of the Pet Place,
a
charity focused on assisting homeless pets, and the host of the
organization's long-running TV and radio programs in Southern
California.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/us/03ricin.html?ref=health

I was wondering if he was the same guy as the sci fi artist.

I don't see much here to suggest he's an animal rights activist - maybe a
budding animal hoarder. For one thing, animal rights activists don't go
around poisoning people, it doesn't remotely fit the psychology of that
sort of activist.  They either disrupt operations by breaking in to free
animals, or they pressure company officials.  Homicide?  Nope, doesn't
pass the smell test, and particularly this kind of thing.

You use something like this when you want to kill someone not obviously
linked to you (so, not a spouse or business associate) and want to not be
detected as the perp.  The guy was down on his luck and probably needed
money badly, I'm guessing he was hired by someone to poison one or more
people.  Second guess, he's just seriously mentally ill and obsessed with
some kind of spectacular act that will make him famous - an Oswald type.

So how did he get poisoned himself?  Perhaps he was the target, and the
beans were planted by whomever it was who tried to do him in.

I keep wondering about the cousin, the person who found the vials and
considered them suspicious enough to take them to the hotel manager.  How
were these vials (and the dogs) overlooked in an earlier search?  Also, why
was the room originally tested for ricin, even though none was found at that
time?  Notice these passages from a CNN report:

"Lombardo said police first were called to the room on Tuesday after weapons
were discovered there. He said officers discovered 'general firearms,' which
have been impounded, and an 'anarchist-type textbook' marked at an entry on
ricin."

"The room was tested for ricin at that time but none was found, Lombardo
said. When officers returned Thursday, they found the ricin, but a test of
the room showed it was not contaminated."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/01/ricin.hotel/


I imagine the cops had some chem test swab kit that they'd never been
trained in how to use - and didn't much know what they were doing.
After the cousin came along, knowing what to look for, they sent
someone down there who actually knew what he or she was doing.

The dogs? Rather odd. Maybe bureaucratic slipup, with animal control
losing the call or showing up and nobody answered the door. Maybe the
manager or someone else promised to take them. Maybe someone else had
them out for a walk at the time. <<

Except, wasn't it two _cats_ and one dog? Which gives us two problems: 1)
you don't walk cats (or rather, cats do not deign to be walked), so they
should have been in the room even if someone was out walking the emaciated
dog; and 2) the moment ANYONE opened the door to that motel room -- manager,
police, Animal Services, etc., those cats should have been out the door like
a shot. Even indoor cats with no experience of the outside world have this
instinct to bolt. Plus, if these cats were living with him in a motel room,
they very likely were _not_ indoor cats. This leads me to conclude that the
animals were probably caged. How they were left there for days following the
discovery of the man, I do not know. If nothing else, you'd think the motel
manager would have wanted them out.

Obviously, there are much bigger fish to fry in this case, but it's just more
pieces to what's shaping up to be a very weird puzzle.

Amy
--
"In my line of work you gotta keep repeating things over and over and over
again for the truth to sink in, to kinda catapult the propaganda." - George
W. Bush, May 24, 2005

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: CALIFORNIA read this...bad guy alert
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  • Effects of amalgamitis
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